Category Archives: Novice Shooter

It’s undeniable that things have been heating up in America with Law Enforcement to an extreme degree. With a disenfranchised civilian populace, an ever growing rift seems to be growing between LEO’s and the people they’re supposed to serve. Add economic hardship, a backwards education system, difficult to manage medical system, and a myriad of other reasons and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

Take a moment to peruse the web and you’ll find a host of articles dedicated to how many police have been killed in the line of duty over the past few years, along with a host of articles outlining how many folks have been killed by police. Most of these sites seem to advocate extremes on either side rather than addressing any sort of issue. I’m going to go on a quick rant that can’t even begin to address the entire scope of the issue, but bear with me.

So who’s to blame? Is it the police as an organization because of their sometimes heavy handed tactics? Or is it the common people for giving into misconceptions about police? Well, the answer isn’t that easy to come by.

Unfortunately, there are too many factors to assign blame to any one individual factor. What we need to stand for is good officers doing good things for their community, support those officers, and prop them up. Police need to take back the old idea that policing was an honorable and honest profession. Police also need to be held accountable from within the organization, and prosecuted within the fullest extent of the law when they slip up in the line of duty, just like soldiers deployed to a war zone must do. If you’re a soldier and you shoot up a car full of people without having been ordered to do so, you’re now facing a murder charge for every single one of those people who dies. The same should apply to police.

At the same time, blaming police for all the problems in America has to stop, and violence cannot be seen as anything other than an absolute last resort. Going off and killing a lone, innocent police officer will do nothing for the cause of freedom other than give the power structure more of an excuse to tighten the noose. There’s no physical action that can be taken, rather, there is legislative action. Unless we want our country to end up looking like Ukraine we have to delegate matters to competent sources. We need to vote for change rather than try and force it at the end of a gun barrel. The more violence that happens against police, the more violence police will do to the population. This is how it works- if police in an area are afraid of getting murdered all the time, they begin to act with more force as they are trained to do to avoid injury, when that force is applied to the wrong person it sends a ripple effect through the community, causing more people who are willing to do harm to police. Then the cycle repeats itself until no one likes the cops, and the cops don’t like anyone else other than their own kind.

Someone has to be the bigger man in all this. Support your local police and they’ll support you. I’m no state apologist, but I’m also not a fucking idiot. If you think police are the biggest problem in this country, you may be part of the problem. We need someone willing to stand up and defend the common people, someone to give a voice of reason in a chaotic world. If there were no police we’d all go around killing one another over minor disputes, and how do I know this? Easy. Go spend a reasonable amount of time in any third world country and see for yourself. We don’t want America to be like Somalia, so please, honor our police, and police, honor our citizens. It’s that easy.

Recently a great tragedy has befallen the small Virginia town of Roanoke when a shooter known by the alias “Bryce Williams” interrupted a live television announcement by unloading the contents of a Glock into the reporter Alison Parker and her TV Cameraman Adam Ward killing them both and injuring the lady they were interviewing. This has helped once again spur the gun control debate into heated realms, with one side advocating more restrictions and the other side claiming it’s the man behind the gun and not the gun to blame, and at the most extreme some folks even stating this was a false flag operation to take away our guns, and some anti-gunners claiming this substantiates the argument to take our guns.

That’s right. Not two days could pass since the tragic killing of these two people before folks make sweeping assumptions, going as far as to say they weren’t killed at all. If you’re one of the people who believes this kind of nonsense take a moment to think before you sip the kool-aid.

First of all, it deals tremendous disrespect to the family and friends of these victims who are reeling from the very real loss of their loved one. That alone should be enough to make folks think before making grand statements as to the legitimacy of the shooting.

Secondly, even if this were a false flag operation, to what end? A myriad of shootings has happened over the past few years and guns have become more prolific than ever, not more restricted. Every move to restrict guns has been met with massive opposition from the gun community, is it really plausible that this one shooting would be the tipping point? How many resources would the government have to use to actually perpetuate this myth successfully? Let’s get into it.

To begin, I will present some of the evidence I have heard folks use to support their idea that this video is a fake, and address that evidence with my own pool of real life knowledge.

“Where is the blood splatter in the video? No blood splatter means the guy must have been shooting blanks!”- My response to that is please, for the love of god, put down the video game controller and return to real life for a second. Bullet wounds don’t always cause massive blood splatter, as a matter of fact, on the contrary. It all depends on volume of fire, trajectory, shot placement, caliber, and the heart rate or blood flow of the target. The video was simply too blurry and shaky to show any blood splatter, and initial shots on target don’t always produce blood. I could go into a personal anecdote about this, but just take my word for it.

“The reporter ran away after being shot.” Is another example folks are using. Adrenaline is a real thing, and with a small caliber pistol round it’s likely that the initial shock of being shot at superseded her immediate reaction to the wound. I’ve seen guys take machine gun bursts and keep running, albeit a bit slower than before, until they had to be put down with a heavy volume of fire, so, next question.

“The hand in the video looked white, not black.” This is in no way a proper piece of evidence to substantiate the claim that this was a government hoax. The shooter was a light skinned man, and the POV video of him conducting the shooting is simply too grainy to be able to tell his exact race.

The list goes on and on. Unfortunately, some folks are dead set on blaming the government for absolutely everything, but let us not lose sight of the tragedy that befell these people. Let us pray to our gods to protect them in their journey to the next realm, rather than steal from the gravity of their loss by wild speculation before they’re even able to be put into the ground.

One thing is for certain- the government does take any chance it gets to pursue their disarmament agenda, and that cannot be denied. Politicians jump at the chance to point fingers and attempt to enact harsher measures to prevent guns getting into the hands of normal people. That is absolutely true. However, to assume that the government is smart enough to perpetuate numerous “false flag” attacks on their own people is a fallacy. Unless damning evidence can truly be brought forth to give credence to these rumors, it’s simply barking at the sky and getting nothing done. It also makes the gun owner crowd look like a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists, and that does nothing to support our cause of keeping guns.

The best thing to do if you actually feel like it is the case that these attacks are false flags is to keep your mouth shut until you have the proper evidence to put forth to the community about it. At least give it a few days before you start throwing around wild speculations, for the sake of the victims and their families. Fear mongering and saber rattling among the community does nothing but force good people to lose sleep at night, and doesn’t take us as the gun owner crowd any step further towards protecting our rights. We must look at every situation from every angle before deciding on it, as is the way of a true skeptic. It’s okay to be skeptical of the attacks, but please, for the sake of doing credit to the second amendment crowd create some good evidence to support any claims.

Stay vigilant, conduct yourself with honor and integrity, talk with your local elected officials, and that is the fastest road to keeping our guns.

My heart goes out to the families of Alison Parker and Adam Ward, and I pray for their safe arrival in heaven. I’m heading to Roanoke this weekend and will hopefully hear a thing or two about the shooting, hopefully their local community is more caring than the internet is on this issue.

Have you ever gone shooting with your buddies thinking that it would be an all day event? You went out and bought a bunch of targets for the day, or you decided to take the little ones out for some bonding time? However you realized that your whole day of shooting was shortened to about 2 hours, not because you ran out of ammo, but because you ran out of targets…I recently had the opportunity to take the kiddos out to the range along with my new present for my birthday. It was the Target-Factory Target, and let me start of by just saying WOW! When I first opened the present I kind of chuckled a little, not really thinking too much of it. I thought it would be something new to shoot at and that was about it. My wife said a friend from her work mentioned it to her when she was scouring for ideas. She told me it was relatively cheap in price so she thought she’d give it a go.I did a little research on the target the next night just to see how it worked and how it lasted. I found out some pretty neat things. This Target-Factory Target is made out of low-density polyethylene, both the frame and the bottles. Which means you can shoot each bottle hundreds of times before you even think about replacing it. The frame holds 12 bottles so that means you get thousands of rounds out of this bad boy before you would even think about needing new bottles. Since you should only be shooting the bottles instead of the frame then you should never have to worry about replacing the frame. In the off chance you miss a bottle and hit the frame there is no need to worry, because the frame is made out of the same material as the bottles so it can withstand some stray rounds. Not that that would ever happen though…After finding all this out, I gathered up the family, guns, and my new toy, hopped in the truck and headed to the range. I was anxious to see if the bottles would be able to handle what we were going to throw down range at them. The guns I brought were a Glock 17 (9mm), Sig mosquito (.22), FNX Tactical (.45), and my CMMG AR-15 (.223). After the first shot I went down range to check out what the bottle looked like. Just like I said earlier, WOW. There was barely a hole in the bottle, and it didn’t seem to even phase it. The bullets don’t just go straight through it like a can. The bottle actually moves back, so there isn’t any doubt if you hit it or not, even on a windy day.Lets talk about the frame now. It is 3’ x 3’ and like I said before, it’s made out of low-density polyethylene. It’s so light that I am able to hold it up by my finger, so no need to worry about the weight of it when you take it down range. It’s also strong enough for me to sit on, so you can know that it’s made out of sturdy material and it won’t break. The frame folds up flat so it’s easily stored away and doesn’t take up room in the house or the truck, unlike a steel target..Overall I truly enjoy this gift and use it every time I go to the range. I can’t complain about not being able to see the bottles because they come in 6 different colors and all of them are extremely bright and easy to see, unlike regular paper targets. I’m not much of a writer, but for something like this I felt like the whole world should know.The ONLY complaint I have about the Target-Factory Target, is that I only have 1, but our anniversary is coming up soon and I think my wife can fix that problem for me : )Safe Shooting To AllP.S. I found a website (wink, wink) that is currently GIVING AWAY free Bottle Targets for next few days… click here for the direct link. -Dillon